Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 4/26: The Kinks, “Celluloid Heroes”
I should have posted this yesterday in advance of the Academy Awards, though the Hollywood Ray Davies was singing about — most of the stars he names were dead or retired when the song came out on “Everybody’s in Show-Biz” in 1972 — bears scant resemblance to today’s film industry. I doubt one person in […]
DL Open Thread Sunday, April 25, 2021
How did America’s police forces react to the Derek Chauvin verdict? They shot and killed six people in various jurisdictions. Hey, when all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target. Why do police escalate to fatal force so quikcly? It’s the training, stupid. Quick, show me another profession that allows union members […]
Song of the Day 4/24: Digital Underground, “The Humpty Dance”
Old school rap lost an influential figure this week. Greg Jacobs, better known as Shock G, the rapper who fronted the Oakland rap collective Digital Underground, was found dead in his Tampa hotel room Thursday at age 57. Though he went by Shock G, he also took on various alter-egos, the most famous being Humpty […]
Song of the Day 4/23: Bay City Rollers, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Love Letter”
You know rock is over the hill when the lead singer of the first boy band dies at age 65. Les McKeown, the lead singer for the Bay City Rollers in their heyday, died suddenly on April 20, cause still unknown. He was with the band for only five years, from 1973-78, but that included […]
Song of the Day 4/22: Ennio Morricone, “For a Few Dollars More”
The proposal to increase Delaware’s minimum raise to $15 an hour over the next several years got a House committee hearing longer than a Sergio Leone spaghetti western yesterday. It could have used a theme song from Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer most famous for scoring Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy. Morricone’s scores were one reason those […]
DL Open Thread Thursday, April 22, 2021
Republican officials in Georgia are getting scared because they can’t convince Trump’s hardcore fans to move on, and Trumpism disgusts the suburban voters the party needs to win elections. Ironic, isn’t it, that a party that wants to rule from a minority position is itself ruled by a minority within? That brings up the latest […]
Song of the Day 4/20: Peter Tosh, “Legalize It”
Peter Tosh once told an interviewer that ganja would someday be as legal as cigarettes. That’s still years off, but as this handy map shows, in only six U.S. states, all of them deep red, does weed remain entirely illegal. Weigh that against 16 states (17 if you count D.C.) containing 43% of the population […]
Song of the Day 4/19: Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
Why did rock music sputter out after the 1990s? I don’t know the answer, but the anti-commercial pose that became de rigueur with punk and extended into the era of college radio and alternative bands couldn’t have helped. Consider this song by the Pixies, the closest thing they ever had to a hit in the […]
Chris Coons Is Worse Than Useless
I’m starting to think Chris Coons is taking revenge on Joe Biden for failing to name him Secretary of State. Delaware’s bipartisanship show pony is at it again, going on Fox News yesterday to announce he and Sen. John Cornyn are working on an alternative to Biden’s infrastructure bill — one that would chop the […]
DL Open Thread Sunday, April 18, 2021
Why do so many Central Americans seek asylum in the United States? Because so many U.S. guns have migrated to Mexico and Central America. Officials estimate about 2 million guns have moved south over the past decade. The General Assembly is returning to Legislative Hall, but the public isn’t invited. House Speaker Pete Schwartkopf said […]
Song of the Day 4/16: Toronto, “Your Daddy Don’t Know”
Protectionism has a bad name among economists, but as with most things, in some circumstances it’s absolutely the right thing for a country to do if it wants to grow a particular industry. For Canada in the early days of rock music, the danger was the domination of its music industry and airwaves by the […]
DL Open Thread Friday, April 16, 2021
County Councilman Jea Street very publicly resigned as co-chair of council’s safety committee after condemning the fatal shooting of Lymond Moses. “I go all the way back to when I was in high school and riots broke out in the 60s, and we looked up, here come the county police with long guns in riot […]
Song of the Day 4/15: Ludovico Einaudi, “Due Tramonti (Two Sunsets)”
Oscar season is upon us — the ceremony takes place April 25 — and it will be a major shock if “Nomadland” isn’t named best picture. Everything about the film stands out amid Hollywood’s mass-produced dreck, including its soundtrack, mostly taken from Italian pianist-composer Ludovico Einaudi’s seven-album collection “Seven Days Walking.” Director Chloé Zhao, who […]
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